An off-Cape media darling of a bird once again poked its head into the Cape and Islands before disappearing again, apparently trying to do the bare minimum to keep itself in the local bird news cycle for another week – I’ve never seen such a publicity hound of a bird. But that rare Bridled Tern from the tropics, the one that loves people and dogs, showed up at Seagull Beach in Yarmouth the other day, where it left its unmistakable behavioral fingerprints in yet another eBird list, complete with photos of the bird circling the observer at close range trying to land on her, then standing on the beach a few inches from her dog. It’s reportedly back on the South Shore near Scituate, where it has spent the entire summer.
But that’s all the airtime I’m giving this bird, who has already taken up two full bird reports over the last month. That tern will need to have an affair with Taylor Swift to get any more mentions from me. I want to talk about some nice early signs of songbird migration over on the Vineyard.
As I always say, early songbird migration, the part that starts in late summer, is a subtle affair, because the first birds to move are exhausted adult birds moving silently through thickly vegetated forests and thickets. They are being quiet because they snuck away from their probably still begging kids, leaving them back on the breeding grounds, and they don’t want them to find them. Kudos to these birds - I have tried this several times but my still begging kids always find me.
But one place you have a fighting chance of seeing early songbird migration is the famous cliffs of Aquinnah, and a recent checklist showed how potent a migration viewpoint it can be. Fledgling ornithologist and recent Cornell grad David Benvent has been putting in some time there. On Saturday, starting at 5:30 AM and continuing for the nearly 8 hours, David tallied 91 species in the thickets, ponds, woods, and sea cliffs at the west end of the island.
The list included some stealth warblers already fleeing the north woods for the warm forests of Central and South America, like Tennessee, Cape May, and Black-throated Green Warblers. He photographed a rare Yellow-bellied Flycatcher stopping by on its way from some Canadian spruce bog to winter in a warm, humid forest or shade coffee plantation in maybe Honduras or Costa Rica. He heard a Dickcissel, an odd bird of the central plains that turn up here in small numbers in fall, though their winter destination is probably the vast tropical grasslands and farmland of Central Venezuela. We birders mostly find Dickcissels by their distinctive flight call, which is invariably described as “flatulent”. You be the judge. <play dickcissel flight call>
Besides the songbirds, the Aquinnah area produced a dozen species of shorebirds, various seabirds including gulls, terns, and shearwaters, hawks and falcons, and every species of expected swallow. The strategy for birding a migration view point like this is to be there at sunrise to catch any reorienting birds coming in off the water, or birds that crossed the island and are milling about because they’re reluctant to cross the water again.
I should note that Aquinnah doesn’t have exclusive rights to August songbird migration – try Gooseberry Island in Westport, Madaket on Nantucket, Morris Island in Chatham, High Head in Truro, or Race Point in Provincetown if they’re closer. All of these offer a heady mix of waterbirds and landbirds so shouldn’t disappoint, even if the migrants aren’t showing. As always, just get out there and look. I’m afraid I need to wrap this up early – I just learned the Bridled Tern has just landed on Taylor Swift’s hat. Or maybe it was her cat – the story is still developing.
